Al-Attiyah tightens grip on Dakar lead, Sanders suffers
RIYADH: Defending car champion Nasser Al-Attiyah extended his overall lead in the Dakar Rally by winning Thursday’s fifth stage in his Toyota.
The Qatari ace’s smooth day contrasted to Daniel Sanders, the overnight leader in the motorcycling category, who imploded with a series of navigating errors.
Australian Sanders finished the day in eighth spot overall, 13 minutes and 18 seconds off new leader Skyler Howes of the United States.
Al-Attiyah, though, is sitting pretty in the car race with a 22min and 36sec lead over Audi’s ‘Mr Dakar’ Stephane Peterhansel, the Frenchman, who has a record 14 wins in the race with six on a motorbike and eight in a car.
Al-Attiyah’s Toyota teammate Yazeed Al-Rajhi of Saudi Arabia is just over 27min further back.
“It was a very tough stage,” said Al-Attiyah.
“We tried to really push like crazy. The other teams have more power and more horsepower, but I’m happy to finish today without any problems.
“It’s very hard because the base is that we’re pushing a lot and we are really tired.”
Peterhansel is still searching for his 50th stage win in the race — he finished third on Thursday after filling second on Wednesday — and found the 373km loop round Hail a tough ask.
“For me, it was one of the hardest stages in my life,” said the 57-year-old.
Sanders was not the only leader to get lost as Wednesday’s stage winner Joan Barreda also lost his bearings in the motorbike race.
However, Frenchman Adrien van Beveren made no such errors, winning the stage a day after celebrating his 32nd birthday.
“It was a tough stage. The navigation was quite tricky,” said van Beveren.
“I pushed as much as I could and I finished alone, but it’s a good feeling to start as five and arrive with nobody, that’s cool.”